Mind Your Office Manners

Mind Your Office Manners

Accept business cards the Japanese way, with an extended hand, and take a moment to read it.

Common courtesy is not always so common, perhaps especially at work. Maybe people just don’t know any better: most of us have never taken a course in office etiquette, and many of the rules for workplace behavior have been unwritten ones. Yet even the politest people need to consider a set of guidelines for acceptable deportment on the job – habits that present them in the best possible light before colleagues and superiors. A new book may help: 301 Smart Answers to Tough Business Etiquette Questions (Skyhorse Publishing/Available now). Author Vicky Oliver tackles matters of proper workplace behavior in a wide-ranging fashion – whether the setting is in a conference room or a cube farm, an office kitchenette or a hallway elevator or an out-of-town convention. Much of the advice is simple, but these are lessons too often lost among professionals today. So whether this list comes as a revelation or a refresher course, please consider reading it. For more information about the book, click here.